Iran's leader drawing fire

While uncompromising language helps cement the president's reputation for some in Iran as a "strong man, with support around the Islamic world," says Mr. Mohebian, the resulting pressure from outside and inside Iran could make him "more radical."

Concern about that shift is echoed in Qom, as the president fills a series of top positions with nonclerical veterans of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war - ideologues like the president himself, who are seen as the second-generation leaders of the 1979 Islamic revolution. They tend to be more politically and theologically uncompromising than most clerics.

"The sensitivity is not about transferring power from the clergy to others, [it] is because of the shift from the clergy to the military," says Sayed Reza Boraie, a cleric in Qom who was influential in the early years of the revolution.

"The political atmosphere is moving toward militarism," says Mujtaba Lotfi, a critic imprisoned in 2004, who is close to Iran's most influential dissident, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. "If there is a referral of Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations, we forecast a physical confrontation."

But so far, Iran has been able to forestall that confrontation. Talks with the European Union will resume on Dec. 21 in Vienna. "Tactically, they have been very successful - they have moved the front line," says a European diplomat in Tehran. When talks with the EU stopped last August, Iran began converting uranium for eventual enrichment; widespread criticism eventually died down, with little consequence for Iran.

Enrichment can produce material for use in warheads or fuel for nuclear plants to generate electricity.

"It will be the same with enrichment, if Iran takes that next step," says the diplomat. "After a few months, it will just be part of the picture."

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to ElBaradei sends a clear but indirect message to Iran, however, of the magnitude of its nuclear decisions. The Nobel committee also sent a direct warning to Iran in 2003, when it gave the peace prize to human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

Germany, France, and Britain have suggested shifting Iran's enrichment activities to Russia, where nuclear material would be enriched only to fuel levels and not to weapons grade. But Mr. Aghazadeh said Saturday that a compromise proposal from Moscow to enrich uranium on Russian soil has not been officially presented, and is "seriously flawed."

Still, he added that Iran would not conduct enrichment during the course of next week's EU-Iran talks.

Iran insists on its right as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium at home - a position supported by a statement last week from 50 experts of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), who argue that the US and EU "have to recognize the limits of their influence and threats."

While noting that concern about Iran's program is "fully justified," and that any new nuclear weapons state would be "destabilizing and dangerous," BASIC experts said only a "more constructive and flexible approach" could avert a crisis.

The bottom line is a mutual lack of trust: Of Iran's embattled leadership in the West; and of the US and Europe in Tehran. "Iran can't trust promises by Europeans that it will deliver nuclear fuel," said Aghazadeh. "There is no guarantee that the West will supply us with nuclear fuel."

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